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Jochen Latz

PartnerCologne

Jochen Latz

PartnerCologne

Advises energy and materials companies on asset operations—from operations and maintenance through to decommissioning—with particular expertise in thermal and nuclear power generation

Jochen serves energy companies in Africa, Asia, and Europe on operational and strategic issues. He specializes in asset operations, with a primary focus on power generation. His expertise spans large capital projects, megaproject turnarounds, and operations and maintenance.

Jochen has worked at more than 100 power plants in, Africa, Australia, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Thailand, Spain, and Sweden.

Examples of his recent clients projects include the following:

  • helping a utility to set up project planning, cost optimization, and stakeholder management for the decommissioning of a fleet of nuclear power plants
  • supporting a distressed European nuclear-asset project worth €1 billion with an operational and commercial turnaround designed to extend the plant’s life and upgrade its capacity, leading to savings of more than €150 million
  • advising a German utility on a transformation program to improve energy efficiency, operations, and maintenance across a large fleet of coal, gas-fired, and nuclear power stations and reduce costs by 20 percent
  • working with a utility to implement an energy-efficiency program, including a pilot project at a three-gigawatt power plant and a subsequent rollout across ten power stations, realizing fuel savings of 5 percent

In addition to his client work, Jochen has contributed to the development of McKinsey’s approach to energy efficiency in power plants and our perspective on nuclear decommissioning.

Jochen began his career as an engineer at the Jülich Research Center, where he completed his doctorate and led a research group that developed a new fuel-processing step that resulted in two international patents.

Published work

Europe’s €10 billion savings opportunity to deliver onshore wind and solar,” McKinsey & Company, September 2023

Decommissioning and dismantling Japan’s nuclear power plants,” McKinsey & Company, September 2020

Education

Jülich Research Center/ RWTH Aachen University
PhD, energy process engineering

RWTH Aachen University
MA; BA, mechanical engineering